Mad Scientist Matt Jones and a friend made this.

Thanx for the tip, Carol.

Wow, sometimes it’s good to check out what’s going on outside my head. Look what I found today:

It’s part of the Plastiki project…  recently arrived in Sydney. Click here for an entertaining critique.

King Leopold II of Belgium was a greedy and cruel colonial rapist – fuck him. I say take down all his statues. But Brussels knitta-gang “Tricot Trottoir” knit a string of plastic hands to place around his statue behind the Royal Palace to commemorate the atrocities of the colonial period. Atrocities like this: “Villages who failed to meet the rubber collection quotas were required to pay the remaining amount in cut hands, where each hand would prove a kill.” The Democratic Republic of Congo won independence from Belgian rule on June 30, 1960, and soon-to-be-assassinated Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba gave a kick-ass speech to mark the occasion. Oh, but back to plastic: love the hood-mask this plastiekfabrique girl’s wearing!

Let the sun shine in through the walls of your plastic bedroom – that’s what you could do in this cottage at Puerto Iguazu, near the frontier between Argentina and Brazil. A local family made it entirely with recycled materials; its walls have over 1200 PET bottles and its ceiling is made of more than 1300 Tetra Pack cartons. Click here for the full article on TreeHugger.

Don’t forget the Temple of Million Bottles . . .

via Carol Marley

Claudia Borgna is an installation and performance artist whose main medium is recycled plastic bags. Her work is a comment on the way we live and how it affects the environment, but she adds “… it’s a non-judgmental comment, since I haven’t really resolved for myself, and never will, its contradictory nature of beauty and danger.”

I discovered Claudia from a photo in the McColl Center artist’s section of Mitchell Kearney’s website.

Water first: this piece (WaterLily) is by Judith Selby Lang, who also took the gorgeous photo. It’s for Art at the Cheese Factory, in San Francisco.

As for food, here’s a good piece about the waste stream from a blog I follow, Cricket Bread. It’s not that I’m lazy and can’t be bothered writing original stories, but damn, there’s way too much information out there anyway, so follow the linx. Besides, I just spent a few months coming up with original content for my new magazine, Fingerpainting on Mars. Printed copies should be delivered today, and distribution starts Monday.

Art is excellent and crafts are ok, but what really rocks my world is when people build entire dwellings out of trash. This one’s by a retired Serbian physics prof, Tomislav Radovanovic.

Ruby Re-Usable has been following Visible Trash almost since its inception, and has been a recycling activist for way longer than that. She’ll also be participating in the traveling trash expo, Visible Trash – Art into Action.  Love those plastic bag babies!

…a Mercedes Pens? Well honey, you’ll just have to talk to The Pen Guy about that. Costas Schuler is one of those rare people with so much energy it jumps out at you across the internet and licks your hand. His other blog, Art Car Central, is the only art car link I keep in my bookmarks bar now. It’s a good-looking, complete and well-researched source – and then there’s the content: he finds stuff I’ve never even heard of! Hats off to The Pen Guy… and stay tuned. He’ll be part of the traveling Visible Trash expo I’m planning for 2010.

I’m on the isle of Vis now, off Croatia’s Dalmatian coast. The Adriatic sea is beautiful, and so are the little coves all around the island. But wait, there’s more — trash, and plenty of it. Here are a couple snaps to give you the idea. I do love trash, but jeez, hasn’t anyone heard of “leave no trace”?

And no, I didn’t pick it all up.